Supernatural Noir

He selected a bag of chips and a Snickers from the vending machines, and then noticed particles of glass on the sidewalk in front of the office—the door had been blown inward and glass shards strewn across the carpeting, as if something had struck it with explosive force. The lights were on, but the night man was nowhere in sight.

Michael stuck his head inside and called out. No reply. He picked his way across the carpet, walking on his toes, and peered behind the desk, half expecting to find the night man’s bullet-riddled corpse, but saw only an overturned office chair and what might have been a dusting of Doritos crumbs on the counter. Going back outside, he surveyed the parking lot, an acreage of blacktop divided by concrete islands and the occasional patch of shrubbery, slots demarked by diagonal white lines, luminous under the arc lights. His sense of unease spiked. There had been at least six or seven cars in the lot, not counting the minivan, and now there were none. What were the odds that their owners had all checked out between midnight and two a.m.? Not inconceivable, he told himself. The Elfland might be a no-tell motel. He sca

Oh, no you don’t, he said to himself.

You’re not going there, you are definitely not buying into the Carole-induced premise that magical Nazi elves have taken over a motel in Bumfuck, Oregon.

“Hey!” he shouted at the motionless figure. “What’s going on?”

Silence.

“Somebody broke into the office! Did you see anything?”

A clattering sounded behind him—like someone ru

He spun about. Something darted behind a shrub about fifty feet away. Something quick and approximately elf sized. He couldn’t be certain of it—he would have liked third-party corroboration. He was exhausted, coming down from a coke binge, and his eyes were playing tricks.

“Is anybody there?” he called in a shaky voice.

The shrub quivered, as if being shaken. He shot a glance toward the second-floor room. The figure in the doorway was gone.

Michael’s balls tightened. He eased toward the parking-lot exit, choosing a path that led well away from the suspicious shrub, intending to put some distance between himself and the motel, cross the road to the Boron station and take stock. Let his nerves settle and then head back to 120, because it had become clear he was under the influence of the coke and of that nut bag Carole-with-an-e-on-the-end, and he needed to gain perspective. That was all. He’d pull it together, return to the room, grab his keys, and drive. Thinking this made him feel steadier. He’d go as far as Portland and find a motel not named the Elfland, a Comfort I

The lights went out.

Not just the lights of the motel and the parking lot, but also those of the Boron station, the shops, and the winking traffic signal. The darkness was unrelieved. It was as if a dense black cloud had lowered over the town, reducing visibility to almost zero. Power failure. He waited for the lights to come back. When they did not, he moved forward, groping, shuffling along, making for the exit, determined to follow through on his plan of taking stock, pulling it together.

He heard the clattering again. It was louder, closer, issuing from every direction—lots of diminutive wooden feet darting near. As he turned this way and that, tracking the noise, something snagged his shirttail and nearly succeeded in dragging him down. Panic put a charge in him and he ran blindly, his arms pumping. Pieces of gravel stuck in the soles of his feet. He ignored the discomfort and kept ru

Overhead, the Elfland’s sign switched on, humming, buzzing, painting on the asphalt a ragged island of illumination upon which he was marooned. The leprechaun on the sign mocked him with a knowing leer. Michael’s instincts prompted him to flee, but he was too enfeebled to do anything other than scrabble at the pavement. He waited for the leprechaun to leap down from the sign, for whatever form the next shock might take.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, and then: “Quit fucking with me!”

Darkness swallowed his words.

He remained lying there, alert for the least sound and hearing none. Moths came to whirl whitely like windblown snowflakes about the sign, and this emblem of normalcy helped restore his capacity for thought. No other lights showed, either in the motel or the town, and that did not make sense, that the sign was the sole source of radiance, unless he were to believe in a reality he wanted to reject . . . And yet he couldn’t reject it. The girl, Carole, she’d never denied being a witch. She must be orchestrating this somehow. That funky singing she did now and again, it could be part of a spell, a retarded Te

He laughed off the possibility and then had the urge to cry out for help; but even if things were normal, if everyone was safe in their beds and the town was not the empty, abandoned-by-God place he envisioned, there was nobody within earshot. And if help arrived, what would he say then? This redneck bitch I picked up hitchhiking, goes about a hundred five, hundred ten pounds, IQ of a snail, she’s a freak, man, she’s tripping me out, animating the elf population of Whidby Bay. Sure, son, the cops would say. Let’s put you into the nice holding tank where you’ll be protected from her u

At length he got to his feet, feeling stronger for the effort, and began walking toward the motel, its unlit faзade melting up from the dark. He was in rotten shape, his head throbbing, vision fluttering, feet and torso bleeding, but bottom line, he had to get the keys. Arguments occurred to him as he went. Explanations. The Elfland’s sign must be on some weird separate circuit. The night man had blundered into the door, shattered the glass, and run away. Vandals had set the elf in the second-floor doorway, or else it was a kid wearing a fu